Visitors Poem by RIC BASTASA

They visit you sometimes
Emptiness’ entourage stares at you
With faces of
Blank walls and slimy snake hands

They bite
But you do not really die
Though you feel a little numb
Irritated

So you think of that as something
Only scary,

Just like ennui slumping
On an old hunchback’s body
Touching your face and squeezes
You to some semblances of
Pain,

But you are not
Even scared a little bit,
You learn as early as a
Naughty school boy, that

These two and others more
Visiting you, lots of other shapes
And other weird forms
Fire trees burning, and
Sea breeze with spikes
And grenade fruits hanging
Machine gun fences and
Plum dusks and grey metallic
Twilights & fire breathing dragons
Spitting bullets,
Soon,

By the constancy of
Their visits, they, after all
Are not that scary or damaging to you
Anymore, than you
Scaring them with some of
Your fits and
Seizures

As always they come without
Warning and they look at you
With their broken shapes and
Twisted faces, sometimes

Louder in their
Inventions of noise
And psychedelic hysterics
And fanged

And horned
Tailed and tasseled
You look at all of them so tired
Turn

To another side of your bed
Pull a blanket to your head
Wiggle a little bit, and slump
Your legs on a bigger pillow
With

Now, your back at them,
You ultimately
Don’t give a damn, you’re tired of
These scary boring visitors
Uninvited and rude
Then comes the time
Snubbing,
You become rude like them

“Go away, leave me alone! ” you mumble

Sound sleep steps in
Your room, the weird
Visitors can harm no more,
And they leave, or if they stay
So what
You are very tired and so used to all their bearings.

“Who scares? ”
nobody, anymore, after all.